From the workbench of the esteemed Horati0nosebl0wer

I got to thinking about the recent sale by Gripping Beast for their 30th anniversary and their 30% off sale for plastics. I imagined how I might build and sell starter armies for games of SAGA. This, of course, lead me to look at starter armies and then the stroke of creativity. Rest assured the left side of my face is fine, my mental faculties are intact (sanity check passed) and my anorexic bank account is still where I left it. I started down the track of the metal starter sets and saw the Huns and was inspired to match it with Conan the Barbarian. The army of Thulsa Doom and his snake cult was something to play with in my head.

The entire starter army is mounted. Yes, all 25 men are on horses and the sculpts are fully disheveled in a manner appropriate for a 1980s film that has barbarian raids taking place. I’m sure that if one wanted to keep to the historical side that would work fine. As much as I hate to put forth Games Workshop product I feel that the addition of their Chaos Knights from Slaves to Darkness would be a great fit for mounted Hearthguard should the Gripping Beast ones be too plain for this fantasy. It could also lend the fifth rider to be open to convert to a proper screen innacurate Thulsa Doom. You might go about scraping away all the Chaos star crap as the Snake Cult needs none of that. Painting, applying custom waterside transfers or handsculpting the double headed snake motif would work , though the digital kitbash of the emblem is an option with a bannerpole topper available.

Of course any rabbithole deep dive isn’t complete without going off the deep end. Here is a file for your very own Snake Cult amulet

To keep the theme of evil cult Myminifactory has some additions that could be of use for sorcerers.

• Male 1
• Male 2
• Female

Depending on if you want to make the leader of this Chaotic army a figure larger than life you could print a Thulsa Doom of your very own for monster scale.

Then again if you want a figure that is better suited to play at 28mm you can get a copy of the man in smaller versions.

• Helmeted 1
• Helmeted 2
• Unhelmeted

If you wanted to create some variance to the army then the stl for a helmet by itself is available as well.

With that all out of my head I think this has been a fun romp into barbarian adjacent thought that lovers of the Cimmerians can make an appropriate foe for their forces.